“Wrestling With the Word”
Faith Seeking Understanding: How Did the Bible Survive?
September 5, 2021
Isaiah 55:6-11
Matthew 5:17-20
Today, our Catechism question is, “How did the Bible survive all this time?” The answer is both simple and complex. The simple, short answer is that the various letters, stories, and poems were held as sacred by the people they were originally written to. Therefore, they took great care to copy it, word for word, line by line, letter by letter. It was all done by hand by hundreds of faithful scribes over the course of centuries, passing it on from generation to generation.
We don’t have the original copies any longer. We have copies of copies of copies. And over the years, it’s true that those faithful scribes may have missed a letter or even a line. But it wasn’t just copied by one—it was copied by dozens. And of the various very old manuscripts that have been preserved and discovered, scholars have done their best to compare and discern the most accurate readings of Scripture.
That’s the simple look at it. Because God’s people believed that these writings were holy and important, they did their best to preserve and care for them. They passed them on. And the followers of Jesus added to them with new stories and more letters. Not everyone agreed which writings belonged in the holy book, but we have what we have, and we grapple with it along with everyone else. As Christians, we have the New Testament to shed light on our understanding of the Hebrew Bible. Roman Catholics include books written in between the time of the prophets and Jesus. And the Greek Orthodox Church includes even more books. But we all come from a place where the Word of God was held in esteem and carried forth.
But I appreciate the question because it isn’t a given that our Bible should exist. There have been times over history in which part of all of Scripture was deemed too scandalous for public consumption—or just didn’t say politically what the powers that be wanted to hear. Jeremiah tells of his writings being destroyed, and God commissioned him to write it all down again. Both Syria and later the Roman Emperor Diocletian tried to destroy the whole of Jewish-Christian Scripture.
Even people we revere have attempted to make Scripture more palatable. Martin Luther, as he translated the Bible from Latin, Hebrew, and Greek to his common language of German, wished he could leave out the books of James and Revelation. He thought that the letter from James was far too focused on works-righteousness. And Revelation—well, if you’ve read it, you know how confusing and frustrating that can be. But it wasn’t up to him, so he kept them.
Thomas Jefferson was offended by a great deal of Scripture and literally snipped whole passages and pages out of his Bible so that it would be more palatable for him to read.
I know there are a lot of passages I prefer not to read—the ones that mess with my sense of fairness and justice. The ones that lead people to treat others as less than human. The ones that people have used to justify rape, genocide, slavery, misogyny, and abuse. Passages like the one where God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac—his precious and only son—the one promised to him by God. Passages like the one where God tells Joshua to lead the Hebrews into the Promised Land by killing all the men, women, and children that were already residing there. Passages like the one where God uses a flood to destroy all of humanity out of anger. There are passages that I can come to terms with when understood contextually, but there are passages that leave me a bit nauseous.
So yes, it is a surprise—perhaps a miracle—that the Bible has survived. It is shocking that the prophets and people of Israel chose to include so many skeletons that they probably would have rather hidden in their closet. The Bible isn’t like Facebook—putting a pretty face on the lives of the faithful people. It doesn’t include posts with pictures of manna and quail with a caption saying, “God provides!” It doesn’t have a list of king after king who were identified as faithful, and therefore blessed by God.
No, it airs all the dirty laundry. In Scripture, we read of greed and corruption, as well as heroism and faithfulness. We read about hope, but we also read about fear. There are praises to God and laments to God. We get the whole of humanity—like it or not. And our job is to struggle with it. To wrestle, as Jacob wrestled. We may leave blessed, but we will also leave with a limp. And that limp is how you can tell when someone has really dealt with Scripture with all of its implications.
I called this sermon series ‘Faith Seeking Understanding.’ You see, when it comes to faith and God and the Bible, we run up against a lot of things we don’t understand. Where much of religion tries to codify it and control it and turn it into black-and-white issues, faith seeks to understand the passage. Faith struggles. Faith gets dirty. Faith sometimes wants to turn back. Faith is anything but certainty. Faith doesn’t—can’t—say, “The Bible says, so I believe it, and that’s that.” Because faith knows something that humanity tries to hide. Life is messy. Love is messy. Relationships are messy. But that’s exactly what faith is about. That’s what our Scriptures are about—life, love, and relationships.
We do have guidance, however. As Christians, we believe that the Bible is the Word of God. But we also believe that the Word of God, spoken over creation, has come among us. The Word made flesh lived among us. And we have seen God’s glory through him. The Christ, the Word, was revealed to us through Jesus. And that changed everything.
In his sermon on the mount, Jesus tells the crowd that he has not come to abolish the Scripture they have come to know and to love. He hasn’t come to discount centuries of faith based on the God who created all things, the God who brought them out of Egypt, the God who provided land and leaders, the God who called Israel to be a light to the world. Instead, Jesus has come to fulfill those teachings. He came to give them a living example of what that looks like.
And he came to give us a lens through which we can read the Hebrew Bible—the Old Testament. Through Jesus, we see a willingness to sacrifice one’s only son by becoming human, walking through the world, and knowing that no matter how it happened, suffering and death would be a part of the deal. Through Jesus, we learn that the Promised Land comes not from annihilation of the other but through love of neighbor. Through Jesus, we experience God’s provision in times of need. Through Jesus, even those outside the people of Judah are named and claimed and called and sent.
Through Jesus, we know a forgiveness and a peace that goes beyond anything we can imagine. Through Jesus, we are empowered to share that forgiveness and peace to others. Through Jesus, on the cross, we are faced with our own unworthiness. And through Jesus and an empty tomb, we are brought into the promise of liberation from death.
We read the Bible through the lens of a murdered God, first and foremost. Not a victorious God. Because God’s victory doesn’t come from defeating people. It comes from defeating death. And to defeat death, God died. Willingly. That is why we struggle with Scripture. We struggle because, through the lens of the cross, the stories of the Bible don’t act the way we want them to. Scripture doesn’t behave. It takes on a roller coaster ride of fear, joy, hatred, exile, hope, and love. But it always ends with love. When we read with Christ’s cross before us, Scripture always ends with love.
That’s how it survives. It survives through you. Through your actions, your words, your hopes, and primarily through your love. It is passed on to others when they recognize the God of the cross in you. The God who doesn’t leave us with certainty or black and white answers but leaves us with hope, and faith, and love.
Pastor Tobi White
Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church
Lincoln, NE
